IBM plans to mount its most ambitious challenge in years to Microsoft's dominance of personal computer software, by offering free programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. Steven A. Mills, senior vice president of IBM's software group, said the programs promote an open-source document format. The company is announcing the desktop software, called IBM Lotus Symphony, at an event today in New York. The programs will be available as free downloads from the IBM Web site.

I am hoping to respond and chastise you nicely so that other's won't jump on you like a pack of hyenas. Read the other OSNews articles/links on MS's methods of operation with regards to ISO and read about some of the technology used with (Un)OpenXML and evaluate whether it is legitimately worthy of being considered an open standard. If you can't decide if it is or not, then please get head checked as soon as possible. ;-) Just because the name includes the word "open", as described by the company itself no less, means nothing. If my name included the word "God", would that therefore mean that unquestionably I must in fact be the God?

None of that really matters. Does Microsoft and others provide translators so that OpenXML will indeed work with OpenOffice and soon enough KOffice? Yes they do. Has Apple and Corel the makers of WordPerfect said they will support OpenXML in their products? Yes they have. Micrsofts interactions with ISO and the percieved deficiencies in the format really are truly overblown. The ODF is a ISO standard than use it, dont use OpenXML. There are many things that are "standards" that arent used. If you dont like it, if you dont want to use it then dont. Im pretty sure Microsoft and 90% of the computing world could care less. People will use it especially since it will be the default file format. I really get sick of all the anti-MS, IBM, (insert name of big company) attitude. It reminds me of the homeless people on the street whom have this percieved war with the system mentality. They are hurting themselves and nobody else. I dont pay attention to half the crap people write about Microsoft or any company for that matter these days because nothing they do will be rigt. For example, If Microsoft took the ODF and added extensions to read legacy script and macros people would be throwing a fit saying Microsoft is trying to pervert the format. Nobody cares. I havent seen any mass defections to Linux or anything else, and the only reason Apple is high up the mountain right now is because they are percieved as cool. Not because Microsoft is bad. You want to throw the word Open around and say its truly not Open well my example is the GPLv3, the word Free is included and yet the GPLv3 is more restrictive than many of the proprietary licenses I have ever seen. Im in the opinion that Microsofts shared source licenses are more free than the GPLv3 is.

Does Microsoft and others provide translators so that OpenXML will indeed work with OpenOffice and soon enough KOffice?

Next time you may want to move your foot before you shoot. (o;

The fact that a translator is needed and that there are no other native implementations means that it isn't open.

Also the fact that MS has said they can't support OOXML if it becomes an ISO standard and they no longer have control of it means that once it is open they will have nothing to do with it. So, why did they submit it for approval if they never intended to support it once it actually became open?

You might think that 90% of the computer users worldwide will start to use (un)openxml, so what ?

The important ones, (governments worldwide), are switching to ODF.

Any company looking for a lucrative government contract will need to be using ODF format too, as various ones, (UK, France, Germany, Norway, Philipines, Australia, and a few US state governments, Mass, Texas) have all said that in the future, they will only send and receive in ODF format, and that people sending in other formats will automatically receive a big black mark on their tender. Not nice for Johnny Businessman.

If I am on the lookout to supply pencil erasers, toilet roll or ribbed condoms to my government, I want them to read it, and reply to it, so I will use Abiword for the task.

This is not Microsoft versus OpenOffice, this is Microsoft and its closed formats against the rest of the computing world. Both developers and users, and the general public.